Even you can save an elephant

Zoo Ostrava again joins the international event focusing on the largest terrestrial mammals. The aim of the event is to introduce visitors to the life of elephants in the Zoo, while at the same time highlighting the situation of elephants in the wild, which is not very favourable. Those interested will be able to directly engage in their rescue. In order to help African elephants, it is enough to bring old clothing.  

Every day, 100 elephants are killed in Africa for ivory. In 20 years, elephants on the African continent might become completely extinct! That said, one bag of old but still nice clothing means one-day feeding for the entire Congo dog team specially trained to detect poachers. Originally 9 million km2, the territory of Asian elephants has today shrunk by 95%! The numbers of wild populations in Asia are estimated at about 40 thousand. Visitors will learn of these and other facts at the Saturday event in Zoo Ostrava dedicated to elephants – both African and Asian, both in captivity and living in the wild.

Tomorrow, on Saturday, August 11, you will be able to participate in elephant quizzes and guessing for kids from 11am to 3pm by the elephants’ range. You can also stop by the touch-screen table and learn about elephants, for example how elephants’ teeth grow, how many teeth they have, but also why elephants are endangered in nature and how people can help them. You will also be able to take an elephant femur and see how heavy it is. The organisation Moment will have their stand near the “At the Farm” exposition; the organisation operates a network of charity second hand shops. Here, you will learn how useful old clothing can be for elephants. The old clothes will also be used to make T-shirt bags (bags made of old T-shirts) or glove puppets and caterpillars from old shirts.

If you don’t want to have your old clothes recycled, you can only hand them over to Moment staff, and they will throw them into a special container outside the Zoo. By joining the collection of old but still nice clothes you can help support the SAVE ELEPHANTS project. The container for old clothes is permanently installed outside the Zoo.

The special elephant day also includes an extraordinary commented feeding of elephants, which will begin at 1.30pm in the elephant pavilion.